When he told Christine about Jack, this twenty-first century Christine who is so young and who seems so much a girl compared to the Christines he has known, he did not tell her about Darius.

He almost did. He thought about it. But he couldn't do it. Jack is in his blood, in his heart, but Darius is deep in his bones. Darius, who he loved for so long, who he had for so long. How could he find words to tell her about Darius?

So he kept the fact of Darius to himself, and decided it was for the best.

There is so much of her future she knows or can guess at. So much of his and his past, so much of Erik's and she will find it all out in time and too soon, and that's no way to live. Why give her something else to know of too soon?

Let her have something, one thing, to learn of as a normal person.

Let her pretend, for a little while.


And it was wonderful with Darius. Every moment, even when it didn't always seem so at the time.

It was, he fancied, the happiest he had ever been, since before Philippe died. Since he was a boy.

Darius made him feel like a boy again, and gave him a hundred reasons to be happy every day.


When they returned from Belfast, after those kisses, after those nights, and Darius gave up his rented accommodation to move in with him, they told everyone it was to save money.

Sorelli smirked, and kissed Darius' hand, and promised him he would be very happy.

(She also threatened him, that if he hurt Raoul, then she knew people who could make him disappear.)

(That bit Raoul only found out afterwards, when Darius got very drunk and told him.)


It hit him when he turned thirty-eight in January 1961 that he had lived to be older than Philippe.

He had known it, in an intellectual sort of way, for two and a half years, and forbidden himself from thinking on it. Running away to Belfast had helped and maybe that was part of it. Taking up with Noël and McQuillan in the NPDs had helped. Writing the book had helped, and so had Darius, and the wondering over him. But that January there was no escaping it, that sharp fact.

Philippe had died at thirty-five, could never grow older than thirty-five. Had had his life stolen from him, at thirty-five.

And he had been sixteen. And now he was thirty-eight, and growing older by the day.

How could that be right?


The life he was living stolen, tainted, by the ending of Philippe's.


He stood in Glasnevin, looking down at that headstone, and couldn't think of a word to say. So he went and got drunk, and wept in Darius' arms.


Noël could understand. Noël, not yet as old as his father had been when TB had claimed his life but as old as his mother had been when it happened. A good deal older than his brother had been, when he died after a surgeon's risk.

"I think a lot about Jody," and his voice was soft, the line of his mouth curved, just a little, downwards.


Stolen lives and what could they do about it? Everything they were living, every choice they had ever made, framed within the tragedies of their pasts.


"I try not to think about it," Sorelli's face pale, and serious. Sorelli, older than both of her parents had been. Older than Philippe. Older than him. Older, just a little, than Noël.

"I wish I could say it gets easier," Christine, and her eyes were gentle, her fingers soft, as she squeezed his hand.

Darius bundled him into his arms, and let him stay there as long as he wanted.


It was Darius, in the end, who pulled him out of it.

Darius, who insisted on their going to dinner, insisted on reminding him how infuriating it was that they could not hold hands in public, that they could not kiss and press themselves close.

Darius, who insisted on their going to the theatre, even when Sorelli was not performing, and with his hand warm on Raoul's lap in the darkness as they waited for the curtain to lift, reminded him of the thrum of his heart, reminded him that here was someone else, someone who thought the world of him.

Darius who brought him to the pictures, and discreetly twined their fingers as films played, most of them more than he could even begin to focus on.

Darius, who held him close at night, and in the early morning, and helped him to feel real, helped him to feel whole, as if he had substance, as if he would not simply blow away.

Darius who loved him, and let him love him in return.


He was thirty-eight and older than Philippe would ever get to be, but Philippe would want him to be happy, and to enjoy every moment of it.


He took Darius dancing.

They could not dance in public, so it was just them, drunk and stumbling around the parlour, the records low and their voices whispers in each other's ears, breathless and giggling and full of love for each other, so much love. And they would sink to the floor breathless and giddy and make love there by the fire.

They danced in the attic and danced in the garden in the still of the night and danced in Sorelli's cottage in Wicklow and would have danced on the flat tin roof of any shed they found, if they could have gotten up there. And they danced beneath the stars, turning soft and slow in each other's arms, and there in the grass, with the moon their only light, they would undress each other and kiss and touch each other in a way that the first men surely must have touched, when they learned to love. Gentle and careful and tentative, each gasp a wonder, a blessing, each moan swallowed by the other's mouth. And they would trace each other's skin, trace their scars, press themselves close and with the sweat on their skin and the taste of the other in their mouths it was like a prayer to any god that might be listening. Not a sacrifice, but a dedication.

How could it be wrong, to fill each other with such happiness? Such peace?

("It's not wrong," Sorelli said, her eyes blazing. "It's not wrong. It's the most special thing in the world. They just refuse to let themselves see it.")


Darius made him feel real again, and as he pressed kisses soft and slow to the crease of his neck, he know that was all that mattered in the world.


(The night Darius came to him, sitting in the library, wearing nothing but a dressing gown, and proceeded to part it, careful and delicate to reveal just a strip of dark skin, the trail of hair at his navel, just to make Raoul's throat try as he tried to read Shelley, was the night Raoul knew he was the luckiest man in the world.)


Turning thirty-nine did not seem so terrible, when he had grown into being older than Philippe.


It was ten years, that year, since his tuberculosis. Ten years since he had realized about himself. Ten years since he had almost died.

Ten years since he had loved and lost Jack.

It could have driven him mad. Might have, maybe, if he had not learned to love someone else.

He wrote a short tribute for The Irish Times, a letter to mark the occasion. To Noël, and his stubbornness and hospital building, and the blood transfusion service. To modern medicine and its wonder drugs. To Sorelli, for keeping him sane. A letter just to record it, and he could not mention Jack but the letter was enough to cause a flood. All these letters in the newspaper, from people who would have died, if it not been for the drugs, for the hospitals, for the vaccinations, for what Noël had done. And of all the things he ever did, it was that flood of letters that he was proudest of. That people might see, and might understand.

Darius clipped them out, every one of them, and put them in a scrapbook.

"So the world never forgets," he said, and Raoul's vision blurred as he kissed him.


(Christine will find those letters one day, he knows. And will make a collection of them, and more. To remind the world.)

(And he knows because she told him, a future version of her come back who had already done it. One of the few pieces of the future she ever told him, and it was 27 May 1997, and Noël was dead and Sorelli too, and when the tears came that he had been bottling for days, she held him as he wept.)


September, and Darius offered to go with him to Clare, to Jack's grave.

Ten years to the day since he had died, but Raoul had to go alone. So he kissed him as he left, and this time he made sure to bring flowers. And as the sunset made the water of the Atlantic burn gold, and he set those flowers down upon the grave carrying that precious name and those dates, he pressed a kiss to the stone and whispered, "Thank you."

Thank you for loving me.

Thank you for letting me love you.

Thank you for sending him into my life.


(Darius hugged him. "Better?" And he smiled. "Better.")


It was an accident with a ladder.

A stupid, foolish accident, and if he had only waited until Darius was home then it never would have happened.

But he didn't wait, and he doesn't even remember most of what happened, only being cold, only the room swimming in and out of view, only the burning pain in his leg that made him scream when he moved it.

A concussion. A serious one, he learned afterwards, when he could keep his thoughts in order. A concussion and broken ribs, and one badly broken leg that had needed surgery, resulting in the limp he would have for the rest of his life.

Sorelli's face was the first one he saw, that he could remember seeing, blanched pale in the hospital. And all he wanted was Darius, Darius, to tell him he would be alright, to kiss him and hold his hand. But Darius, when he came, could do neither of those things, and his eyes were rimmed red from crying, and his face was blurred with Raoul's own tears.

He slept and dreamt of Philippe, swinging him around to stop him crying after he fell from a tree, and woke to Noël, his face stern, consulting a chart.

"You need to be more careful," and there was something in his face that Raoul only realized afterwards was concern.


There was something Sorelli wasn't telling him, that much was clear.

He had been in hospital three days, as far as he could tell, and his head was finally beginning to feel more his own, which was why he could tell she wasn't telling him something. It was a certain cast to her eye, a tilt to her head, and only for he had spent years studying each of her expressions he never would have been able to tell. But there was something she wasn't telling him, so he resolved to ask her.

"What is it?" And his voice was still hoarse, with tiredness and pain and the heaviness of the morphine and whatever other drugs they were giving him, and it was all he could do just to roll his head on the pillow, and look her in the eye. "What are you hiding?"

She looked as if she still didn't want to tell him, but so help him he had to know, and he shifted as if he would try to move, try to lift himself, and her eyes flashed and her hands on his shoulders pressed him gently back down.

"I'll tell you if you promise not to move."

An easy bargain, and she probably knew she was playing into his feeble plan, but it was good enough for him.

"I promise."

"All right." And she sighed. "You remember those missiles Russia was sending to Cuba…"


The date was 24 October 1962.

In later years, it would come to be known as part of the Cuban Missile Crisis. There was a march in Dublin over it that would come to be seen as some sort of historic event, and argued over for decades.

Such facts were far from his head, when she showed him The Irish Times, which had a photo on the front of Noël Browne being attacked by police dogs.

And one inside, of two dogs attacking Darius.


They were all right, that was the main thing. They were all right and she reminded him of that repeatedly even as panic threatened to overwhelm him that Darius had been attacked, Darius, and it was only when Darius came to see him, when he could squeeze his hand and look into his eyes and see that he was not lying that he could believe him, that he could breathe again, and if there were tears in both of their eyes then neither of them mentioned them.

A march in Dublin against the crisis and both Noël and Darius attacked over it, and him, him, broke up after falling from a ladder.

Such a time to be stuck in bed.

It was almost laughable.

But they were all right, and when, with the screens around his bed, Darius kissed him, carefully on the lips, it was the first time in days that he felt normal.